This year is the first one that Kylie is staying with Daddy on Christmas Eve and opening gifts here in the morning. So to prepare for Santa’s arrival Melissa and Kylie have baked some sugar cookies and we are going to place them on “Santa’s plate” on Kylie’s table right near the tree. Kylie has already opened one present, her brand new pajamas that Mimi made and as an added bonus she got to talk to Nana and Uncle Wayne! We are all very excited to see what the morning is going to bring. Unfortunately Melissa won’t be able to join us because she has to work in the morning. Some pictures were taken tonight and can be found in the gallery here.
Weekend in Frankenmuth
This weekend Melissa and I did something we have never really done before, we simply went away for the weekend. Sure we have gone places before; back to NY for a wedding, and Melissa tagged along once on a work trip to PA, but we have never just gotten away. This weekend, however, we had the opportunity to get away and so we took it. We didn’t really go far, only about 90 minutes from home up north to Frankenmuth to walk around and visit the shops and then head over to Bronner’s. We had both been to Bronner’s a number of times before, but I had never actually been to Frankenmuth, I’ve driven threw it, but never actually stopped in and walked around. Considering we were able to get a really good deal on a hotel room at the SpringHill Suites, we decided to go up for the weekend. We spent, literally, the entire day Saturday just walking around all the little shops along Main Street and the River Place shops, we even had lunch at the Bavarian Inn, but I did not have chicken. It was real nice and I think I would like to go back up when the weather is a little nicer to see what it looks like thawed out and to take one of the riverboat rides. Also I wouldn’t mind going up and seeing the inside of the Frankenmuth Brewery, apparently they don’t open until noon on Sunday and we had to go to Bronner’s. It would also be great to be able to someday purchase one of the beautiful Grandfather Clock’s from the Frankenmuth Clock Company. I think the best part of the weekend though, was just simply getting away from all the hustle and bustle that has been going on recently with work and the holidays fast approaching. Hopefully we will be able to get away again some other time.
Wiggly Teeth
For quite a while now Kylie has been asking when she was going to lose her teeth, as this would mean she is growing up and becoming a big girl. When I told her that I didn’t know, that they would get loose and come out when they were ready, she would say “Well when I am six they will come out.” So imagine her surprise when she awoke this morning to find not one, but two loose teeth! She was so very excited that she had to call Daddy and tell him all about it. When I answered the phone she said “Daddy! Guess what!? I have two wiggly teeth!” Turns out that both of her front two bottom teeth are just becoming loose. She is very excited about this new turn of events and is looking forward to them coming out and her new grown up teeth coming in. As for Mommy and Daddy, while we are both very excited for Kylie, we are also a little sad because it means Kylie is growing up all to fast.
First Kindergarten Parent-Teacher Confereence
This morning Mommy went to Kylie’s first kindergarten parent teacher conference with Miss Rader, Kylie’s kindergarten teacher, about Kylie’s progress for this marking period (Daddy was going to go too, but it was a 10 minute meeting, so Mommy told Daddy not to make the 2 hour round trip when she could easily fill him in). Miss Rader started off saying that she LOVES having Kylie in her class, she said she wished she had 20 more just like her. She said that Kylie was progressing a bit ahead of the class and that she even knew some things that she needed to know by the end of the school year already. She said that Kylie will more than likely be reading by February at the latest due to how much Kylie already knows of the alphabet and how she is already sounding out many words. She told me most of the kids want to sit next to her in class all the time, so she’s pretty popular too. When Mommy asked if Kylie behaved herself and didn’t have to be told things over and over, Miss Rader said that Kylie did much better than most of the children. She said that there are sometimes that she has to ask Kylie twice, but it never has to be said more than two times. Miss Rader told Mommy that Kylie had a couple of boyfriends, to which Mommy laughed. Miss Rader said that she told Kylie that she needed to find some better boyfriends, but between the two of them they figured out the reason Kylie likes the so called “bad boys” was because she had empathy for them because they didn’t have a lot of friends. Miss Rader also told Mommy that Kylie asks questions that seem so adult (which we have always knows). She said one of the questions that stand out in her mind is when someone from the school board came for a visit. He was making his rounds when he stopped by the kindergarten room, he said “hi” to the class and said where he worked. At this point, Kylie raised her hand and asked, “So, are you an educator or a builder?” The man didn’t know how to respond to that question, the cool thing is he came back to the classroom after he had an answer. He proceeded to tell the class for the next 20 minutes about what he did. We (Mommy and Daddy) think it was cool that he did that because of a question Kylie asked, but even better that someone in the school board came back to respond to a 5 year old. It showed Kylie and the rest of the class that it is good to ask questions and if you don’t have an answer, to follow up later when you do. Over all Miss Rader gave Kylie a great report and confirmed that Kylie is ahead of schedule and doing great!
Ears Are Finally Pierced
Tonight Kylie told Mommy and Aunt Sissy at the dinner table that she would like to have her ears pierced. They said “Oh really? Are you sure?” To which Kylie said, “Yes! Can we do it now?” Mommy was pretty excited since Kylie usually says she wants them done, but when they press to make certain, Kylie says she wants it done some time later. So considering that Kylie seemed to be pretty certain this time, they all got in the car and drove over to the mall. Kylie was chatting the whole time and making up songs, Mommy thinks Kylie might have been a little nervous. Mommy told Kylie that it feels like a shot and that they would put one “shot” in each ear, and after they do it it will stop hurting; Kylie said “ok” and shortly there after they arrived at the mall. Once they got to the mall, they checked in at two different stores and they only had one person working (Mommy was hoping for two so they could do both ears at the same time). Once Mommy decided on Claire’s they tried to get Kylie’s ears pierced, but they wouldn’t let they get them done since Mommy didn’t bring her purse and had no proof of ID saying she was Kylie’s Mom. Kylie was still really wanting to get her ears pierced so they walked over to Piercing Pagoda to try and get them pierced there. In order to make sure they didn’t run in to the same problem they had at Claire’s so they had to tell Kylie to pretend that Mommy was Aunt Sissy and Aunt Sissy was Mommy. They told Kylie that if she really wanted to have her ears pierced, they had to do that since Mommy didn’t have her purse. Once at Piercing Pagoda, they signed some papers, picked out a pair of 3mm 14k studs for Kylie and then got prepared to have her ears pierced. Kylie was still nervous so “Aunt Sissy” held her hand in the chair while “Mom” looked on. The lady cleaned both ears, marked them, then asked Kylie which ear she wanted to start with, and Kylie choose her right ear. When the lady did the first one, Kylie had this look on her face that said “I didn’t like that.” She started tearing up and said she didn’t want the other ear done, she just wanted one. Luckily the lady was a pro and didn’t give Kylie even a minute before she said “No, sorry sweetie, we’re doing this one too,” and did the second one. Once it was done, Kylie was crying a bit more and Mommy picked her up right away to hug and squeeze her and tell her how brave she was and how proud Mommy was. The lady working there gave her 2 suckers and a sticker. By the time we made it back to the car, Kylie said her ears didn’t hurt anymore and she was so happy to have earrings and she was talking about all the new earrings she wanted to get.
Exporting PuTTY Sessions
I use PuTTY a lot, both at home and at work and for many different reasons and projects. Normally my saved sessions are not something I need to worry about moving around, my work sessions stay at work and the sessions I use at home stay at home. Recently, however, I had need to backup my PuTTY sessions in preparation of having my laptop replaced at owrk. I did some searching and found this article describing how to export and import the registry key that contains all your PuTTY connection settings. After reading through the article I realized that alternatively it would just be easier to create a .bat file containing this command:
regedit /ea putty.reg HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY
This command says to run regedit and export (/ea) the registry key (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY) to a file (putty.reg) that you can later merge back into the registry by right clicking the resulting file (putty.reg) and choosing “Merge” from the context menu.
NOTE: Never merge registry settings into your registry that you are not certain of the origin of, it can be very dangerous!!
Renaming Volume Groups
I’m anticipating a project coming up at work that will hopefully allow me to rearrange some file systems on my TSM server and improve some performance. However, one of the things I want to do as part of this project is to rename some volume groups on the housing AIX server so they make a little more sense in the overall scheme of things. Problem is I was not positive as to how this should be done, so I needed to do some research. I found the commands that I will need to use to implement and make the changes, in theory:
First I need to know what volume groups are on the system, this can be found using the lsvg command:
# lsvg
rootvg
vg04
raweagantsm02
raweagantsm01
raweaganarch
Next I need to know which disks are in each volume group, this can be found using the lspv command (truncated output):
#lspv hdisk0 00cdfe5b0855e5f5 rootvg active hdiskpower0 00cdfe5b448b684a vg04 active hdiskpower13 00cdfe5bd1d8fdd5 raweagantsm02 active hdiskpower92 00cdfe5b4494c652 raweagantsm01 active hdiskpower96 00cdfe5b448dddcf raweaganarch active
Next I will need to offline the volume group that I want to rename using the varyoffvg command:
#varyoffvg vg04
Now we need to export the volume group so we can later import it with the new name. To export a volume group use the exportvg command:
#exportvg vg04
Now an lspv would show all disks previously associated with the exported volume as having no volume group:
#lspv hdisk0 00cdfe5b0855e5f5 rootvg active hdiskpower0 00cdfe5b448b684a None active hdiskpower13 00cdfe5bd1d8fdd5 raweagantsm02 active hdiskpower92 00cdfe5b4494c652 raweagantsm01 active hdiskpower96 00cdfe5b448dddcf raweaganarch active
Now I can import the old volume group with the new name using the importvg -y command (the -y <volume_group_name> tells the system what to name the new volume group, if this is omitted the system will automatically generate a new one):
#importvg -y raweagantsm03 hdiskpower0 (or any other disk that was part of the volume group)
Now an lsvg should show the new volume group:
# lsvg
rootvg
raweagantsm03
raweagantsm02
raweagantsm01
raweaganarch
Additionally an lspv will show the disk now being part of the new volume group:
#lspv hdisk0 00cdfe5b0855e5f5 rootvg active hdiskpower0 00cdfe5b448b684a raweagantsm03 active hdiskpower13 00cdfe5bd1d8fdd5 raweagantsm02 active hdiskpower92 00cdfe5b4494c652 raweagantsm01 active hdiskpower96 00cdfe5b448dddcf raweaganarch active
Hopefully this works the way I think it should. I have spoken with my local AIX guru and told him my plans and everything seems to check out. Once the new disk comes in for the rest of the project I’ll work on implementing the above.
Meijer Trick-or-Treat
Meijer had a special event today in celebration for Halloween. They set up tables throughout the store that were giving away candy to all the little trick-or-treaters. Seeing as Tiffany will be taking Kylie out tomorrow I figured we could at least go and do this today, so we all got dressed up and went to do some trick-or-treating, yes all of us. They even had a photo shoot setup to capture the memory: 
Halloween Events
Today was a day full of special happenings at Kylie’s school, and she had a ton of fun participating in all of the activities with her friends. It started off with all the kids being allowed to wear their Halloween costumes to school for the day, so Kylie was very excited to be able to wear the witch costume that Mimi had made for her. Then when she got to school she was able to take part in the Halloween parade! Mommy was able to go and see Kylie and all of her classmates and friends wearing their costumes and watch as the school put on the parade. Then tonight was Kylie’s School’s Halloween Party and apparently everyone at school was talking about it all week, so Kylie was really excited about it and looking forward to going, so that was what we (Kylie, Daddy and Melissa) did. Now, before I mention how cool it was that the school puts this on every year, and all the neat stuff they have for the kids, let me just say this place was packed! There must have been around 700 people here; parents, kids, teachers it was crazy. They had trick-or-treat bag decorating, dancing, food, a haunted hayride, pumpkin decorating, and pictures. There was even an entire hallway decorated with the lights dimmed and stations set up for the kids to trick-or-treat at with teachers in costume giving out candy. We didn’t get to do everything, but Kylie had a lot of fun dancing and trick-or-treating, also after waiting in a long line we got to go on the hayride, which was a whole lot of fun. All the pictures from the day can be found in the October gallery under today’s date.
FREE Kindle books!
While checking out the specs on the new Kindle I stumbled upon this page at amazon that lists all the FREE kindle books. These are all mainly old books that are out of copyright and in the public domain, but there are some great reads here; like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and many many others. I know there are a lot of things that I want to read on this list and seeing as I also just discovered the Kindle App for Blackberry, now as long as I have my phone with me I will have books to read! Eventually, though, I want to get a Kindle!